The Taiwan High Court yesterday insisted that The Journalist magazine must apologize to Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) for a story it published in November 2000.
The court dismissed The Journalist's appeal against an earlier ruling in Lu's civil lawsuit against it, although the magazine will be allowed to file a final appeal to the Supreme Court.
"Basically, the Journalist did not submit any new evidence to persuade the court that there was a reason to overturn the previous verdict. So we decided to uphold the previous court decision and rule against the magazine," said Hsu Cheng-shun (
"If necessary, the defendants are allowed to file another appeal, which will be final, within 20 days after they receive my verdict," Hsu said.
Neither Lu nor the defendants attended the delivery of yesterday's verdict.
Wellington Koo (
"They [the defendants] did not submit any surprising or new evidence during previous hearings, so they did not persuade judges to overturn the result," Koo said.
Hsu yesterday ruled that the defendants, seven employees of The Journalist, have to run one-day front-page advertisements in four major Chinese-language newspapers to make up for the damage done to Lu's reputation.
Lu sued the magazine over a story that claimed she had called its editor-in-chief to spread a rumor that President Chen Shui-bian (
The magazine alleged that Lu spread the rumor in order to unseat Chen.
Lu filed her suit on Dec. 21, 2000, demanding a formal apology from the magazine.
On April 10, 2002, the Taipei District Court found the defendants not guilty of criminal libel. However, judges ruled that the story had damaged Lu's reputation, which is a civil offence, and ordered the seven defendants to "clarify and admit" their mistake by publishing a statement to that effect on the front pages of the nation's 32 newspapers, as well as broadcasting it on radio and TV for three days.
The cost of such clarifications has been estimated at NT$180 million.
On Dec. 13, 2002, the High Court upheld the verdict on appeal, but reduced the punishment to run one-day front-page advertisements in four major Chinese-language newspapers. The court also dismissed Lu's request that the defendants broadcast a clarification on radio and TV for three days, which would cost about NT$3.86 million.
On April 29 this year, the Supreme Court upheld the verdict concerning criminal libel, and the defendants decided to file a second appeal against Lu's civil claim.
The magazine yesterday said that it would not make any decision about whether to file its final appeal to the Supreme Court until it has received Hsu's verdict.
The defendants are the magazine's president Wang Chien-chuang (
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS